Colors
by JillyMcBop
Summary: Willow visits Tara's grave. This story explores her thoughts and feelings. Rated for dark themes and lots of angst. But it does have a happy ending.


**Colors**

Blue sky. Green grass. Beautiful things. That day was beautiful. The sky was deep blue, the grass was a rich green. But none of that mattered. Not after the gunshot. Not after...

"Your shirt."

Willow flinched as the memory of that moment flooded her mind. Again. Seeing the small, red spots on her blouse. They contrasted with the clean whiteness. White. Purity. Innocence. The color of clouds and snow and daisy petals. And then there was the feeling of one hundred feelings at once. Perfect bliss after the perfect kiss which became muddled with the question of why; why were there red spots on her blouse? Then the feeling that comes right before panic, the denial of what your eyes see, what your mind registers and what you know in your heart. For a split second you go cold and you burn and yet, you're numb. It's always sudden. Unexpected. Inevitable. Cruel.

"Tara?!"

She dropped to the floor and slumped over on her side. Willow dropped to her knees and pulled her towards herself.

"Tara? Baby? Baby, come on, honey, get up!"

Then the feeling of panic, the feeling that every breath you breathe should be your last because your heart can't accept the paralyzing realization: She was gone. She wasn't going to get up. She wasn't going to smile again, or kiss again, or speak, or feel.

"No, no, no!"

They weren't so much words as protests from the deepest part of her soul. Protesting the injustice, the cruelty, the robbery of life. The loss that heart should ever have to bear and yet it is a curse on us all to bear it.

She held her in her arms, her mind accepting what her heart still refused.

"Oh god, oh no, please, come on, come on, Tara, please, come on, baby!"

Her heart refused to give up. There had to be some thing left. She couldn't be gone forever. She was her always. She tried a desperate appeal to supernatural forces to bring her back but to no avail. She was gone. No chance to say goodbye. Nothing left of her life in the flesh but the warm blood that flowed from her fresh wound. Red on blue. Red, the color of roses and sunsets and strawberries and rubies. Blue, the color of the sky, the color of forget-me-nots, the color of a lake. Now that color that was marred by a spreading red circle of blood. It felt wrong. Even the colors protested each other, as though two worlds collided that should never have touched.

Willow walked quietly through the pristine cemetery. Every grey stone stood upright as though it were guarding a sacred place. The dewdrops on the short, green grass sparkled in the sunlight like tiny mirrors. She was glad that Tara's gravestone was in a sunny place. The stone itself seemed like such a crude memorial for one who had been so full of color and grace. But her name was on it. It was hers, and hers alone. Willow knelt down in front of it and stroked the letters with her hand as she always did. The stone was rough and the letters were flat and the grass had grown seamlessly over the place where her body had gone into the ground. To a photographer it would have made a beautiful picture. To a painter it would have made an ideal landscape to replicate on a canvas. To a groundskeeper it looked like it belonged, it was one with the other plots in the cemetery; simply another marker on a blanket of green. To a monument maker it was one of many, each letter etched perfectly and uniformly into the stone. To Willow, the scene was more than the sum of its objects and colors. It was the closest she could get to Tara. The stone wasn't her, the body beneath the ground wasn't her, the name carved into the stone wasn't her. But she was there. It was her place. Whenever Willow went there, she closed her eyes and saw her. She was a graceful soul, full of color and light. She smiled, and she danced, free from pain and bondage to the mortal coil.

Then Willow opened her eyes. A smile was on her lips but it quivered. Tears spilled over and flowed down her cheeks and she didn't wipe them away. She sighed and her smile steadied. Tears are like rain. Sometimes bitter, sometimes refreshing. They could water the earth, if you let them. They are part of you. Water from your soul, finding its way into the world, giving physicality to your deepest emotions. Willow watered the earth with her tears every time she went to Tara's place. They were tears of sadness, coming from the bottom of her soul where the empty place would always be. But they were also tears of remembrance, from the part of her soul that kept alive the beautiful memories of their life and love together.

Two flowers grew in front of the gravestone. Two different flowers. Both beautiful and both unique. Both alive and full of color and grace. A teardrop fell onto one of the flowers. It slid off of a delicate petals and disappeared into the ground. Willow slowly rose from her kneeling position, breathed deeply and looked around, once again connected to her surroundings; the blue sky, the green grass, and the still cemetery. She gazed once more at Tara's gravestone and smiled at the memories that replayed in her mind of the good times they'd had together. Stones can shatter into pieces. Flowers die. Grass withers. But the memories of the love that she and Tara had once shared would never die.

"You're my always," she whispered.


End file.
